I HAVE SOME SECRETS FOR YOU

by MAURICE PHILIPPS ======================
I HAVE SOME SECRETS FOR YOU is a Blog made to share unknown, exclusive information about secret history. Here, I'll try to transmit documented information that are the result of serious research. My objective will always be to critic accepted perceptions and opinions about current events, politics and history, recent or old. And thus, in each post, to unveil some secrets for you.

Friday, October 15, 2010

THE PERMINDEX-CIA LINK II

PART 2: FERENC NAGY: THE CIA MAN IN PERMNDEX

Who is really this Dr. Ferenc Nagy that exercised a leadership position in Permindex? The fact is that this little known individual was an international figure which is recognized to have played a major role on the international scene.

In 1946, after the war, Ferenc Nagy was elected Prime Minister of Hungary in this country first democratic election.At the same time, he also acted as Hungarian Minister of Defence. Opposed to Communism, he was forced to resign his position after his 5 years old son was kidnapped, and immigrated to the United States. Shortly after his arrival in the US, Nagy co-wrote an essay on his political career, titled The Struggle behind the Iron Curtain that was published by MacMillan in 1948.Royalties from this book help him buy a 130 acres farm in Herndon, Virginia.Those acreages of land, situated West of Washington D.C., gain significantly in value in 1958 when the Eisenhower administration choose to establish what is now Dulles International Airport just West of Herndon.

﻿

Ferenc Nagy at left with President Harry Truman, circa 1948

﻿In Washington, Nagy kept important ties with the US government and the CIA during the Cold War.In 1956, Nagy and the CIA were accused by the Soviets of being behind the Hungarian uprising.A November 8th 1956 New York Times dispatch reported:
“Soviet propaganda outlets reported today that the uprising in Hungary has been financed by the Western Powers and that advance plans had been approved by the "highest circles" in the United States.(…)The allegation of outside planning and support for the uprising against the Hungarian government was contained in a report from Vienna broadcast by the Moscow radio tonight. This named Ferenc Nagy, former Hungarian premier and [International] Peasant Union leader ..., as the key figure in the supposed plot against the regime. The report said that Mr. Nagy met with Hungarian emigres in Munich "not long before the beginning of the rebellion in Hungary." He was alleged to have told them that he had just come from the United States where plans for the revolt had been "agreed upon in the highest circles." Mr. Nagy is also alleged to have worked out plans for supporting the revolt with arms and supplies in agreement with "American Organizations."

Such activities are the reason why Nagy was described as “a long-time asset of CIA Deputy Director of Plans, Frank Wisner”, who in 1956 pressured President Eisenhower to intervene in Hungary after URSS intervention.Wisner was the creator of a CIA’s organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."In the 1990s, those kinds of activities will be revealed of being part of the NATO “Stay Behind” operation, after Italian authorities discovered the existence of the Gladio network in this country.

Oddly enough, Permindex was incorporated in Basle in 1956, the same year when Ferenc Nagy travelled to Germany and Switzerland on the eve of the Hungarian uprising.It is certainly not by pure chance that Nagy, Wisner CIA’s asset, choose this busy period of his life to become one of Permindex’s directors.In all evidence, Nagy proximity with the CIA and the fact that at the same time he associated with Permindex is enough to let us conclude that Permindex was related to Wisner’s anti-Communist crusade, in as much that it was directed by Nagy, one of CIA’s important collaborators in its anti-Soviet operations. Also, the facts that the Italian Gladio network was revealed to be coupled with the P2 freemasonic lodge and that Bloomfield described Permindex’s George Mantello as a 33rd degree Freemason, tend to indicate that Permindex may be intricated with the CIA’s Italian Gladio network.

But, if we need a more official and explicite proof of the Nagy-Permindex-CIA linkage we can found it in writing in a CIA document transmitted to the House Select Committee on Assassination (HSCA) and released by the US National Archives in the middle of the 1990’s.This CIA’s memo dated 3/24/67 indicated that:
“NAGY, Ferenc, (…) was a cleared contact of the International Organizations Division.His 201 file (i.e. its CIA personal file) contains a number of references to his association with the WorldTradeCenter.”

The memo concluded on those words: “The attached documents are related to an investigation of Permindex initiated in 1959.This was the result of a query from NAGY asking if CIA would be interested in using Permindex in some capacity. The documents did not indicate whether or not CIA decided to use Permindex.”

It is hard to believe that the CIA, engaged in an epic battle to counter Communism in Italy, and active in organizing its Gladio network, would say no to "a query from NAGY asking if CIA would be interested in using Permindex in some capacity". Most probably, "The documents did not indicate whether or not CIA decided to use Permindex” because the answer was to obvious!

After the failure of the Hungarian uprising, Nagy became active in other CIA anti-communist projects, particularly those concerning Latin America and Cuba. Nagy eventually moved to Dallas, Texas where he was residing in 1963, allegedly engaged in anti-Castro activities.

It is worth keeping in mind that Frank Wisner, Ferenc Nagy’s CIA controller, was the superior of William Harvey and Cord Meyer, two of the CIA men that were implicated in the JFK assassination by CIA officer E. Howard Hunt in his death bed confession. In 1962, Bill Harvey, after an important conflict with the Kennedys, was exiled to Italy where he became Chief of Station in Rome. According to Hunt, Harvey organized JFK’s assassination from Rome and recruited Corsican sharpshooters to accomplish the President execution.

To further document the relationship between Nagy-Permindex and the JFK assassination, it is also important to know that Ferenc Nagy was identified as someone that had visited Guy Banister's detective office in New Orleans by Bannister's secretary. The private eye was an ex-FBI agent that was directing anti-Castro activities in Louisiana and was related to Lee Harvey Oswald and Clay Shaw.

In conclusion, what we now learn from documents of the Bloomfield Archives is that Dr. Nagy was the initiator of contacts with David Rockefeller at the beginning of year 1960, and that Rockefeller did collaborate with Permindex and CMC in order to speed up the development of his World Trade Center organization.

The facts
1) that the Bloomfield letters show Nagy, the CIA “cleared contact”, as an autonomous Permindex decision maker in this relation with such important personality as David Rockefeller;
and
2) that the ex-Hungarian did offer the Central Intelligence Agency to use Permindex in 1959, tend to demonstrate that Nagy was in command of Permindex and willing to use it to fulfil CIA’s objectives, or those of rogue CIA’s officers like William Harvey.
Thus, if we give credence to E. Howard Hunt’s confession to the effect that Bill Harvey planned the JFK assassination from Rome, the connexion between Clay Shaw and the Roman CMC become of the utmost interest.
According to some reports, Clay Shaw, the New Orleans businessman who was in contact with Lee Harvey Oswald and who was accused by Jim Garrison of conspiracy in the JFK assassination, only joined Rome CMC’s directorship in 1962. There is a strong probability that documents from the Bloomfield Archives dating from years 1961 to 1963 can clarify the circumstances in which Shaw joined CMC and Permindex. But we won’t know before a few years if the Louis Bloomfield Archives contain such information, that because Library and Archives Canada (LAC) --against its donator’s will-- is actually keeping secret the Permindex documents that are less than 50 years old, on pretext that they contain information that are protected by a client-attorney privilege.

This pretext seems quite frivolous when we consider that the above Bloomfield’s letter to Dr. Imfeld was kept secret until 2010 for this same reason. Yet, this letter was sent in Carbon copies (CC) to two other correspondents, and even by a blind CC, that is by hiding to Dr. Imfeld that a secret correspondent was copied on the letter. Furthermore, Dr. Imfeld wasn’t lawyer Bloomfield’s client but one of his associates in Permindex, and Canadian jurisprudence is clear on the effect that documents from a lawyer acting as a company’s associate or manager aren’t protected by professional secret. That any competent archivist could declare such a letter covered by an attorney-client secret is nonsense.

The poor judgement that is at the origin of LAC’s decision to keep secret an important part of the Bloomfield Archives, that could contain information on the activities of Permindex, Ferenc Nagy, and Clay Shaw in years 1961 to 1963, is depriving the world of important information about the JFK assassination.

Just as the Louis Bloomfield Archives —for the first time—documented the relation between Ferenc Nagy’s Permindex and David Rockfeller’s WTC, the other Bloomfield documents kept secret by Library and Archives Canada —against their donator’s will— may well contain exclusive information on the relationship between Ferenc Nagy, Clay Shaw and Permindex. The JFK assassination being definitely one of the most important historic events of the Twentieth Century, it is deplorable that a national historical institution like Library and Archives Canada locks its doors on such documents.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

THE PERMINDEX-CIA LINK

PART 1: PERMINDEX’S FERENC NAGY MEETS DAVID ROCKFELLER

After Jim Garrison charged Clay Shaw, director of the New Orleans International Trade Mart, of conspiracy in the JFK assassination, and following revelation that Shaw was one of the directors of Rome Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC), many observers tried to find out what was the relation between Shaw’s International Trade Mart and CMC--Permindex’s mother corporation. Furthermore, since Centro Mondiale Commerciale translated in English as “World Trade Center”, many were wondering if there was any link between Permindex and the World Trade Center organization, which most prominent establishment was the New York City’s WTC, David Rockfeller’s creation.

Such a connection between David Rockfeller’s WTC and Permindex would be significant because it would link the shadowy Permindex, this mysterious international corporation which did vanish in thin air after JFK assassination, to the Rockefeller’s omnipotent organization composed of institutions such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group, entities who, far from disappearing since the Sixties, now seem to control the world’s politic, not to say the world itself. Remember also that, even if “World Trade Center” is today a commonly known appellation and even if there is now more than 300 WTCs established around the planet, the concept of the “World Trade Center” was something unheard of in 1960. For instance, Clay Shaw’s organization in New Orleans was an “International Trade Mart” and in the Sixties was complementary to an “International House” with which it merged only in 1985 to form a WTC.

Interestly enough, the Louis M. Bloomfield Archives, hold by Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, contain some documents proving that Roman CMC was the inspiration for the WTC concept and that a relation existed between Permindex and David Rockefeller. Furthermore, those documents show that Ferenc Nagy, a former Hungarian Prime Minister who had strong contacts with the CIA, was the direct liaison between Permindex and Rockefeller. In a February 4th, 1960 letter, Louis Bloomfield wrote from its Montreal law office to Dr Ernest Wolf, a Permindex’s directors residing in Basle, Switzerland: “You’ll be pleased to hear that David Rockefeller had a meeting yesterday with Dr Nagy, which I was unable to attend on account of my present physical condition. It was a great success. Mr. Rockefeller pointed out that it may take considerable time before his own project is realized and suggested immediate collaboration the form of which I shall discuss with Mr. Rockefeller on my meeting with him in a week or so, when I am better able to travel. In the meantime, Mr. Rockefeller contacted the Chairman of the New York Port Authority, which is the principal mover of the scheme for New York and which is a multi-billion dollar independent concern, to start technical discussions on collaboration.” Bloomfield completed this letter by informing Wolf that Permindex’s literature shall be distributed by the U.S. Department of Commerce and its 33 field offices, according to an article that was published in the February 1, 1960 issue of Foreign Commerce Weekly.

Six days later, on February 10th, Louis Bloomfield reported the developments on his negotiation with Rockefeller in the middle of a letter that, once again, reflects the confusion reigning between the Permindex’s partners, a subject that we saw previously in this blog. In this document, Bloomfield wrote to Dr Ernst W. Imfeld, the Zurich lawyer whom the 1996 Swiss Independant Commission of Experts to investigate Switzerland’s role in the Nazi period did identify as an associate of SS Friedrich Kadgien, a Nazi involved in “criminal methods for acquiring currency, securities and diamonds stolen from Jewish victims” (see previous post in this blog).

Bloomfield stated: “I am going to New York tonight for very important meeting with Dr. Nagy, the Port of New York Authority and Mr. David Rockefeller’s personal representative, on a scheme of collaboration between the two groups. (…) Following the meetings tomorrow and Friday, we are to have a second meeting with Mr. David Rockefeller some time next week, but in view of the cries and complaints from the shareholders, I have no alternative but to postpone my meeting with Mr. Rockefeller in order to examine the situation in Europe on the spot.”

In a next blog entry, we will come back to this document and on the conflict between Bloomfield and his European shareholders and analyze the hints this last letter give us relatively to the Permindex hierarchical structure. For now, let’s focus on the Permindex-Rockefeller connection.

First of all, we should take note that even if Montreal lawyer Louis Bloomfield kept his European partners informed about the Rockefeller meetings, he didn’t consult them or seek their approval. From the two above letters, it is clear that only Bloomfield and Dr. Ferenc Nagy are involved in the negotiations with Rockefeller, and more specifically that Nagy is the one that did initiate this contact and had –alone– the first meeting with David Rockefeller. That is a detail quite revealing.

In the previous Bloomfield Archives’ Permindex documents reproduced in this blog, we saw that the “genious” behind Permindex was Georges Mantello, a 33rd degree Freemason who, through its contacts with the Savoy Royal family, was able to obtain Roman lands at “dirt cheap” price. From those documents, we also noticed that the management of the Permindex corporation relied in the hands of directors such as Italians Georges Mantello and his son Enrico, and Swiss Drs. Ernest Wolf and E. W. Imfeld. We also saw that Permindex’s primary business was to speculate on those lands through the creation of societies (Capocatta, Marina Reale) in which international investors (like Edmund de Rothschild from Paris, Hans Seligman from Switzerland, or Montreal attorney Stanley Vineberg) took speculative participations. But what we are now witnessing is that, apart of those real estate deals, in the matter of CMC’s chore business, that is of its international trade promotion activities, Permindex’s true leader was Dr Ferenc Nagy; the man that took the initiative to meet David Rockefeller alone in New York and whose actions are only reported to CMC’s European directors through Louis Bloomfield’s short letters.

The leadership role of Dr. Nagy in Permindex is important to acknowledge because as we will learn in the next chapter of this blog, Ferenc Nagy was a cleared CIA contact and, according to declassified secret documents, he did offer to put Permindex at the disposition of the Central Intelligence Agency,

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

MORE PERMINDEX DOCUMENTS

BLOOMFIELD AND HIS PERMINDEX’S PARTNERS:A VERY TENSE RELATION

Previously, we have seen, in many Permindex documents originating from the Bloomfield papers held at Library and Archives Canada (LAC), that during the year 1959 the relation between Louis M. Bloomfield and Georges Mantello, the acting director of Permindex in Italy, wasn’t always harmonious.

New documents from November 1959 and January 1960, show that Louis Bloomfield had also some tense relations with others peoples interested in Permindex such as Swiss banker Hans Seligman. Again, the documents in the Canadian archives tend to counter the hypothesis that Louis Bloomfield was the acting head of Permindex and the engineer of the JFK assassination, ever if this shadowy company was really associated to it.

In a November 25th, 1959 letter, Bloomfield wrote to Seligman, the head of the Hans Seligman-Schurch & Co bank in Basel, Switzerland to clarify his position and to complain about Seligman’s attitude. The Montreal attorney was upset to the point of menacing to retire from Permindex. Bloomfield wrote:

“I at no time made any arrangement with you covering banking arrangements with your firms for Permindex. Everything we discuss, as you rightly know, was subject to confirmation by my clients and they and I resent being presented with your faits accomplis without having had an opportunity of coming to a final arrangement.”

More specifically, Bloomfield reproached to Seligman the fact that he hid information about Parkhof, Permindex first Swiss real estate deal that was facing bankruptcy. He wrote: “Your failure to disclose to me the Parkof situation and your general attitude has caused me no end of trouble and embarrassment and I am now on the point of reconsidering my entire position vis-à-vis the Permindex complex.”

A NAZI COLLABORATOR INSIDE PERMINDEX
Bloomfield, who acted as representative of clients having invested in the capital of the Italian Permindex company, seems genuinely anxious that this capital was not engulfed in the failure of the previous Parkhof Swiss project. His concerns are echoed few weeks later, in a January 13th, 1960 letter to Dr E. W. Imfeld, a Swiss lawyer that had relations with SS having loot goods from Jews during the war.

Indeed, Dr Imfeld was a very strange associate for Bloomfield, who was himself an ardent Sionist. In its final Report, the 1996 Swiss Independant Commission of Experts to investigate Switzerland’s role in the Nazi period did identify Dr Ernst W. Imfeld as an associate of SS Friedrich Kadgien, a lawyer at the Nazi Public Economy Department during the Second World War. According to the report, “Kadgien had been heavily involved un criminal methods for acquiring currency, securities and diamonds stolen from Jewish victims playing a major role. (…) Kadgien and his colleagues had certainly put aside assets, and were able as early as 1947/1948 to set up a company using Swiss middlemen, thus preparing the way for their departure to South America soon afterwards. Imhauka AG, whose name records the initials of its three founders – Imfeld, Haupt, Kadgien—set up its domicile in Sarnen, in Central Switzerland (…) A Zurich lawyer, Dr. Ernst Imfeld, who had worked for Petrola during the war, ran the business from Zurich, while the Germans involve moved to Bogotà and Rio de Janeiro.” (References: Report, the 1996 Swiss Independant Commission of Experts to investigate Switzerland’s role in the Nazi period and Dodis (Diplomatische Dokumente des Schweiz) )

In a January 13th letter, Bloomfield, who familiarly call Imfeld “Dear Peter”, contest the validity of amounts figuring in Permindex’s budget as guarantees toward Parkhof and ask Imfeld, who act as Permindex’s verificator to explain the presence of those amount in the budget.

The same day, in a letter to Georges Mantello, Permindex Italian director, Bloomfield asked clarification on the same matter. He wrote: “You were told by Metzger and I was told by Imfeld that these guarantees did not exist. What is the story?”

If the tone of this letter to Georges Mantello, the 33rd degree Freemason that Bloomfield considered the “Genius behind Permindex”, was only politely interrogative, we can’t say the same about the letter that he sent eight days later to Enrico Mantello, Georges’ son. In this letter, Bloomfield vehemently reproached Enrico not to keep him up to date. “I asked you, on several occasions, to cable me the results of your discussions in Milan. (…) You did not bother to keep me posted and I want you to know that I resent this cavalier attitude on your part (…) I would never have undertaken this job if I had not been assured of your cooperation. The result of putting my faith in you is that I have to get my own information through secondary sources.”
One part of this letter, really suggest that, far from being the supreme head of Permindex, Montreal lawyer Bloomfield has been the object of the Mantellos’ lack of personal respect. Bloomfield wrote: “While I forgive the incident at the airport where you did not bother to send someone to meet me, as this was only a personal question involving loss of time, I cannot forgive your failure to keep your promise to me to keep me posted as to what has been happening in Permindex.”

Once again, the documents that Louis Bloomfield have donated to the Canadian National Archives, allow us to understand that Bloomfield’s role in Permindex wasn’t one invested with supreme executive authority.

Even if those documents indicate for the first time that Permindex was a corporation more complex and suspect than previously known –that is an organisation that included in its outside circle peoples like Baron Edmund de Rothschild and, in its inner sanctum, 33rd degree Freemason Georges Mantello and Dr Imfeld, an associate of former SS German State official having looted Jewish values— the Bloomfield Archives constitute a strong testimony that rebuke the unfounded accusation according to which he was the executive head of Permindex and, consequently, the engineer of the JFK assassination. Louis Bloomfield, that was aware of those slanders, first published in 1968 and more widely disseminated around 1977-1978, in all likelihood, had, at this time, decided to give his papers to the Canadian Public Archives in order to straighten the record about his association with Permindex.

At his death, in 1984, Bloomfield couldn’t imagine that, 20 years later, the development of Internet and of the World Wide Web would catapult what were then slanders only printed in hardly accessible underground publications to millions of computers around the earth. If he had any intuition that those rumours about him would spread with the years, Louis Bloomfield would have certainly found some comfort in the fact that he donated his papers to a governmental archival institution to the condition that it makes them public 20 years after his death. Regrettably, there is another thing that Bloomfield couldn’t imagine: that the public institution that accepted his donation would deny its obligation and keep secret an important part of the papers relating to Permindex.

If, from his grave, Bloomfield had the possibility to write a protest to Library and Archives Canada, he would certainly find pertinent many phrases that appeared in his letter to Enrico Mantello. Thus, he could certainly complain about “The result of putting my faith in you” and tell LAC: “I want you to know that I resent this cavalier attitude on your part” and “I cannot forgive your failure to keep your promise to me.” Perhaps he could conclude like he did with Enrico, by saying: “You do not seem to realise the seriousness of the situation.”

Sunday, June 20, 2010

THE PERMINDEX PAPERS IV

FREEMASON GEORGES MANTELLO'S MONOPOLY MONEYIn the two previous posts, we have view a series of Permindex documents from the Louis Bloomfield Archives kept at Library and Archives Canada (LAC). They showed us that, beside Bloomfield, Montreal attorney Stanley Vineberg, from the Phillips, Bloomfield, Vineberg and Goodman law office, and French bankers Edmund Rothschild and François Pereire were related to Permindex real estate deals that took place in 1959. Those papers also gave us the details of this dealing that consist in the acquisition by the Permindex syndicate of lands from Countess Calvi, a member of the Savoy Royal family, who was represented by Carlo d’Amelio, a director of Centro Mondiale Commerciale. Finally, the last post also demonstrated that the relations between Montreal lawyer Louis M. Bloomfield and Italian Georges Mantello, a 33rd degree Freemason that was Permindex’s acting director, weren’t always harmonious.

But, whatever was the gravity of the October 1959 altercation reported in the previous post, Bloomfield and Mantello kept working together on Permindex and other financial deals for the years to come. And, like we will see below, the two men had for project the formation of a Venezuelan corporation with a capital of nothing less than 10 millions dollars, an amount that, in 1959’s dollars, was the equivalent of 75 millions of today’s money..

As we’ve seen earlier, on October 20th 1959 Louis Bloomfield wrote to Joseph Slifka, a New-York businessman interested to buy shares of Permindex, and expressed his dissatisfaction with the way Mantello was conducting business. Two days later, on October 22, Bloomfield cabled to Georges Mantello a message where his dismay is again evident. In a telegraphic formulation, Bloomfield wrote: “Mantello greatly disturbed puzzled tour cable Stop If Seligman not serious pointless my coming Stop cannot understand why telephoning Seligman clarify rendezvous His cable affects your honor.”
The Seligman referred to in this cable was Hans Seligman a Swiss banker head of the Hans Seligman-Schurch & Co investment banking house located in Basel. Seligman and Ferenc Nagy, a former Hungarian premier and a notorious anti-Communist, were among the initiators of the first attempt to found Permindex on Switzerland soil in 1956. Together, they were members of the board of directors of the CMC, Centro Mondiale Commerciale. There would be chapters and chapters to write about Seligman and Nagy and their relations to the anti-communist intelligence network. (Those interested can read a text from researcher Lisa Pease at: http://beyond-the-illusion.com/files/Conspiracy/Assassination/permindex. ) But, to go back to the Bloomfield-Mantello relation, it is interesting to understand the meaning of the phrase “His cable affects your honor” in the above document. In a very diplomatic language, Louis Bloomfield is telling Georges Mantello that information from Seligman’s cable contradict Mantello, and this formulation is just a step before telling flatly to Mantello that he’s a liar. Again, this kind of tense exchange shows that Louis Bloomfield shouldn’t per se be seen as the supreme commander of Permindex, and that Georges Mantello was directing it on its own will.

But whatever tension exists between Bloomfield and Mantello, the two men didn’t stop doing business together. In fact, the day following the above cable, on October 23, Louis Bloomfield sent to the Mantellos a $57,000 USD draft and the following agreement guaranteeing his brothers in law’s participation in Marina Reale, Corporation, a Panamean company that was holding sea front lands sold through Permindex. The brothers in law were Moe and Max Pascal, and according to the agreement, their $57,000 down deposit was representing 40% of a total participation that would totalize $142,500 USD. And this total amount was only a 7 ½ interest in Marina Reale which total capitalization was thus in the amount of 1,9 million US dollars.

It is of some interest to note here that the two Pascals, Bloomfield’s brothers in law, were the owners of Pascal company, a firm that has an hardware chain of stores in Canada that sold firearms in the domestic market for huntsman but that was also listed in government papers as arms trader. It is also of interest to note that Harry Pascal, Louis Bloomfield’s nephew, later worked for Tibor Rosenbaum’s BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International) and later for the Rothschilds of London. The Pascals agreement above also gives us more insight on Louis Bloomfield’s parts in those complex real estate dealings. The agreement read: “all such shares to be held in escrow by Mr Bloomfield until full payment has been made by all the participants.”

This detail clarifies the reason why Louis Bloomfield, at the time of the Garrison investigation, was described as “the major shareholder of Permindex for parties unknown”. As an intermediate between real estate sellers and buyers, and as the architect of complex corporate structures extending from Italy to Panama and Venezuela and passing through France, Canada and United States, Bloomfield was also acting as a clearing house holding in escrow Permindex and Marina Reale’s shares up to the closing of transaction, that is up to the moment when the full payments and documentations of those deals are completed.

Another document, a November 26th 1959 letter from Louis Bloomfield to Hans Seligman gives more precision on the Montreal lawyer’s relation to Permindex. In it, Bloomfield wrote: “I did not purchase, for my group, the 10% or Permindex shares referred to in your letter. These were to be placed at my disposal on behalf of my clients against future acquisition.”

It is somewhat interesting to note that even Hans Seligman, the Swiss banker, had trouble to understand who was owning what part of Permindex. But this letter also gives us a hint that Bloomfield himself didn’t possess a definitive perception of what was happening. He wrote: “Therefore, pending further clarification of the entire Permindex picture, I cannot recognize the statement set out in your letter.”

Another Bloomfield’s letter, sent one week before the one sent to Seligman, illustrates how much the Montreal lawyer is kept in the dark about details of the businesses conducted in Italy by Georges Mantello. Four months after the July 17 letter in which he asked if he should go ahead with the formation of a Canadian corporation issuing for 26 millions Bolivars of debentures and when they will go to Venezuela (see previous post for the original letter), on November 19th, 1959, Louis Bloomfield wrote Mantello to “confirm our telephone conversation that you want the debentures issued in United States Dollars instead of in Bolivars.” The headline of this letter refers to a “Canada Venezitalo Realty Investments Limited” company, that is in all evidence the name of the Canadian corporation that Bloomfield created for Mantello, but there exist no trace of this society in the Canadian government registers or on the internet.

This letter also demonstrates that this change of mind about the currency to use is a last minute one and that it occurred after Bloomfield had the Bolivars debentures printed and that he now need to have them destroyed. What is most interesting is to read the listing of the debentures to be printed. As mentioned by Bloomfield, they add up to a total of 2200 certificates and, even if Bloomfield didn’t gave this precision, their combined value totalizes 10 millions US dollars, an amount that in 1959 dollars would represent 75 millions in 2010 money.

Well, it is not only quite surprising to see that a corporation issuing for such an important amount of debentures could be created from scratches, but there is some questions to be asked about the seriousness of its director who, overnight, decided to have this amount of certificates issued in US dollars instead of Bolivars. One of the questions to ask is the following: “Is Mantello, the 33rd degree Freemason behind Permindex, really at the head of a financial empire and he is really in the capacity to make such important last minute decision? Or is he only a conman?” Since, through the work of eminent lawyers like Louis Bloomfield and Stanley Vineberg, he was able to associate in his deals bankers like Edmund Rothschild, François Pereire and Hans Seligman and many businessmen like New Yorker Joseph Slifka, and that on a long period of time, we can exclude the possibility that Mantello’s dealing were just fraud. But still, since there subsist no tangible trace of Mantello’s financial empire, --that is no public trail of an organisation that reunite corporations with such ambitious names as Centro Mondiale Commerciale and Permindex (Permanent Industrial Exhibition), along with Marina Reale, that had a capitalization of 1,9 million USD (in 1959), and this last intercontinental corporation named Venezitalo Realty Investments Limited with its 10 millions US dollars debentures-- one has to wonder if Mantello’s multinational empire wasn’t of an underground type, more related to secret intelligence or organized crime than to official international business. Again, we should keep in mind that if it wasn’t for the accusations linking Permindex and CMC to the JFK assassination, those two international corporations would today be non-entities unknown from the public.

For its part, Louis Bloomfield had his own questions to ask. In his letter, he wrote: “Why so many certificates? Would it not be easier to have them, say, in denominations of $100,000. $50,000. $25,000. $10,000. $5,000. and $1,000 as we had agreed upon for the Bolivars debentures?” There is no trace of Mantello answer to this question in the available Bloomfield archives. But what comes in mind when we consider Bloomfield’s question is that Mantello’s debentures look more like an exchange currency, some kind of convenient Monopoly money, than certificates of investment. So one has to ask: if it is not to play Monopoly, for what game is intended this new discreet currency put at the disposition of an Italian 33rd degree Freemason? Secret intelligence operations financing? Contraband deals, including arms or drug deals?
Well for now, we don’t know a lot about the Mantello’s activities and intentions. And —what is the most important thing—we can clearly see that Louis Bloomfield neither is aware of Georges Mantello’s plan. Again, this kind of information should be remember to those who concluded that Bloomfield was the chief of Permindex and the engineer of the JFK assassination just because he was holding a majority of Permindex’s shares on behalf of others.

Whatever was the role of Permindex in regard of JFK assassination, and whatever was the part Bloomfield played in CMC and Permindex, the Louis M. Bloomfield archives, held at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, clearly show that the characterisation of the Montreal lawyer as the chief master of the JFK assassination was a false conclusion and an exaggeration. It is, in all evidence, to clear his name in this matter and establish the historic facts that Louis Bloomfield donated his papers to the Canadian Public Archives. And again, Library and Archives Canada not only affects the honour of its donator but is dishonouring itself by refusing to fulfill its commitment toward him and by keeping secret part of those archives against Bloomfield’s will.

Thursday, June 03, 2010

THE PERMINDEX PAPERS III

THE INTERNATIONAL REAL ESTATE DEAL

In the previous post, we have seen four Permindex documents originating from the Bloomfield Archives kept at Library and Archives Canada (LAC). They allowed us to learn that Montreal attorney Stanley Vineberg, from the Phillips, Bloomfield, Vineberg and Goodman law office, and French bankers Edmund Rothschild and François Pereire were participants in one of the earliest Permindex real estate deal that took place in 1959.

The next series of Permindex papers reproduced below will help us understand the nature of this secretive organisation and the part that each actor was playing in it. Principally, they demonstrate that, at least in one Permindex 1959 real estate deal, Montreal lawyer Stanley Vineberg played a prominent role and was consulted by his law associate Louis Bloomfield at every stage of the transaction. The documents also allow us to understand that, in 1959, Georges Mantello, a 33rd degree Freemason, was using Permindex to mount financial transactions. In the real estate deal referred to in those documents, Mantello appears as a realtor whose function is to find buyers for a property sold by Countess Calvi who is represented by Carlo d’Amelio, an Italian count who is also acting as president for Centro Mondiale Comerciale, Permindex’s parent corporation. For his part, Louis Bloomfield appears to be the representative of a syndicate of buyers ready to pay to take possession of the Countess Calvi’s property. For those buyers, the main interest was to invest in real estate whose value was supposed to skyrocket, but, as we will see later, those buyers didn’t acquire lot of land but shares in Permindex or in others corporation like the Panamean Marina Reale corporation, that were the registered owners of the properties.

It is interesting to note that some of those documents, like the three next cables sent by Louis Bloomfield to Georges Mantello between April 6 and April 10 1959, put together and viewed with other brusque letters in the archives, allow us to understand that the communications between the Canadian lawyer Bloomfield and Georges Mantello, the Italian Permindex’s director, aren’t perfect and that their relations are a little tense. Again, this knowledge tends to make us review the fast and too hurried conclusion, made by some authors, of seeing lawyer Louis Bloomfield as the supreme head of Permindex, and thus as the engineer of the JFK assassination; a line of thought that have for starting hypothesis the assumption that Permindex is somehow related to this historical crime. Remember that those, in JFK assassination literature, who view Bloomfield as a potential participant in the Dallas conspiracy, have done so because he was described as the “main shareholder of Permindex for parties unknown”.
The first cable, dated April 6 1959, by itself seems innocuous. Its only contains a line with the question: “When are you coming?”, and an imperative demand: “Cable immediately!” But, and it will become evident in view of other documents, this communication is a sign of the impatience and irritation that Bloomfield resent toward Mantello.

We don’t know exactly what answer Bloomfield received from Mantello because the part of the Bloomfield Archives containing most of the Permindex documents consists of books of outgoing correspondence from the Montreal lawyer to his correspondents. But the next day, on April 7, 1959, Bloomfield cabled Mantello his instructions. In clear, Bloomfield asked Mantello to transfer his participation of 100 000 $ in the real estate deal to the account of Stanley Vineberg at Montreal Royal bank. When this amount will be received, Bloomfield, through the Royal Bank, will cable a total of 350 000$ to the Bank Lavoro in Roma as a deposit for the payment to be made at the conclusion of the deal.

Then, three days later, on April 10, Bloomfield, who probably had receive the money, sent a direct message to Mantello, telling the Italian director that he didn’t respect his promise of cabling some documents for examination prior to Mantello visit to Miami, the following week. This information about a Miami meeting is quite intriguing. After learning in previous cables that Bloomfield and Mantello projected a trip to Venezuela related to Permindex, we now discover that, in order to complete the Permindex deal, they considered going to Florida. Further cables will teach us the reason of this trip.

Bloomfield had to be patient with the Italian director, because his archives only shows echoes of their dealing 17 days later on April 27. At that date, Bloomfield sent a cable and a letter to his law associate Stanley Vineberg who is in Miami Beach on the Don Quixote boat.

In the cable, Bloomfield announced that the Mantellos (Georges and his son Enrique) and Carlo d’Amelio will arrive Friday night, the first of May; then he asked Vineberg if he can meet them in New York. To his letter, Bloomfield joined a copy of a Contract of Sale.

Since it is a normal occurrence for Canadian businessmen to spend part of the cold winter in Florida, and since some Montreal newspapers mentioned that Stanley Vineberg was doing so in 1959, we can deduct that the Miami trip had for primary purpose a meeting with him. But, the fact that both Bloomfield and Mantello would consider such a displacement in relation to the Permindex real estate deal, reveal that Vineberg was playing a prominent part in this business.

Stanley Vineberg’s importance is confirmed in the following May 8th letter from Louis Bloomfield to Carlo d’Amelio in which Bloomfield wrote that “Mr Vineberg and I will make arrangement to come to Rome toward the end of this month in order to work out a physical division of the property mutually satisfactory to both parties.”

Five days later, on May 13th, 1959, another letter from the same correspondents confirms that Louis Bloomfield had to consult Stanley Vineberg on details of the real estate deal such as the bank to use in the money transfer.

In all evidence, the transfer of money was done and real estate deal that was the object of the above communications was closed; at least, for a few months the Bloomfield Archives contain no document referring to this deal.

Then, in July 17th we find echoes of the Venezuelan project for which Bloomfield and Mantello were contemplating a trip to South America. In a July 17th letter, Bloomfield ask Mantello if he should form a Canadian corporation that should issue debentures for an amount of 26 millions Bolivars. And ask: “When are we going to Venezuela?”

For those who think that this new project and future trip is a sign of good relationship between Bloomfield and Mantello, the next document will prove that the honeymoon, if there was one, wasn’t very long.

We have no trace of an actual trip to Venezuela, but three months later a Bloomfield letter to Joseph Slifka, a New York businessman, shows that the Montreal lawyer and the Italian Freemason had a serious confrontation. In this October 20th. 1959 letter, Bloomfield relate: “I still have not recovered from the shock of your telephone conversation today when you told me that I should have arranged to see that the cheque which you issued to Mantello personally was made out to the Banco Nazionale del Lavoro.”

“To refresh your memory, Bernard (Bloomfield) was in the room at the time, I completely lost my temper with Mantello and wanted to walk out of the room when he refused to treat the affair in an orderly manner and have the cheques made out to the bank.”

Reading about such friction between Bloomfield and Mantello, Permindex’s Italian director, really made one doubt that the Montreal lawyer was in control of Permindex. Thus, even if we accept the possibility that this company was used to finance the JFK assassination, we should consider that others then Bloomfield were the true controllers behind the shadowy firm.
Again, such findings make us understand the reasons why Louis Bloomfield, whose name was associated with Permindex and the JFK assassination in literature published first in 1968 and most largely in 1978, gave his archives to what was then named the Canadian Public Archives. They also make us understand how much Library and Archives Canada, who still refuse to open part of Bloomfield Archives against its donator’s will, is making itself an obstacle to the knowledge of historical truth and to the reestablishment of Louis Bloomfield’s reputation.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

THE PERMINDEX PAPERS II

THE UNKNOWN PERMINDEX STORY :

CANADIAN ATTORNEYS,

VENEZULEAN CORPORATION

AND FRENCH ROTHSCHILD

It is highly curious that sisters companies Permindex and Centro Mondiale Commerciale, with such ambitious names, didn’t make their marks in the business world. In reality, if it wasn’t for the fact that they became famous for their alleged association to the JFK assassination, those two companies wouldn’t have left any trace in history. When we consider that Permindex stands for Permanent Industrial Exhibition, we can only find suspect that, far from achieving permanency, this company was of the “Fly by Night” type, and that, instead of exhibiting anything, it was shrouded in a veil of secrecy.

Before the partial opening of the Louis Bloomfield Archives at Library and Archives Canada (LAC), the information about Permindex and CMC were very few. In his article, PERMINDEX: The International Trade in Disinformation, published in 1983 in Lobster magazine author Stephen Dorril synthesized the rare information then available about Permindex (see http://www.8bitmode.com/rogerdog/lobster/lobster02.pdf for the complete text) :
“The origins of Permindex appear to lie in New Orleans in 1948 - probably with Clay Shaw's International Trade Mart. In 1956 Permindex - apparently representing a "group of American business interests" - decided to move into Europe and set up in Basle, Switzerland. Two companies were set up under the auspices of the Permindex mother company: Building Finance (AG) and Parkhof (AG). (AG just indicates that this is a private company.) These two companies were supposed to buy land and develop it with skyscrapers, parks etc - the press accounts at the time were full of grandiose plans. The President of Permindex was Ferenc Nagy. But it appears that he was not the controller of the companies - more a nominal head, a front man who would appear attractive to Government officials and politicians. The only director who appears to have been identified was George Mantello, a Rumanian in Swiss business and media circles.”
“Permindex's plans in Basle appear to have generated considerable commercial suspicion. None of its plans came to fruition and the Basle press, which had earlier devoted columns and columns to its plans, became critical. In 1961 the Basle Workers' Paper (…) accused Nagy and Permindex of being "a bunch of swindlers". (…) Nagy sued for libel, won the case, but was awarded very small damages (...) Shortly after the trial Parkhof (AG) went bankrupt and, as one of the papers put it, it became clear that what Nagy and Permindex had been up to was a basic con.”

The new information available from the Louis Bloomfield Archives at LAC confirms this impression. As we have seen earlier, in 1960 Permindex was primarily engaged in a real estate speculative deal consisting of reselling Roman lands acquired at a “dirt cheap price” by 33rd degree Freemason George Mantello through his contact with the Royal Savoy family. Many of the documents in the Bloomfield Archives also corroborate that Mantello was the directing force behind Permindex, since Louis Bloomfield, in his letters and cables, seems to negotiate with him and to seek instructions from him relatively to Permindex’s business.
But, more then just confirming what was previously known, the Permindex documents in the Bloomfield Archives expose the full magnitude of this discreet company.
For instance, the few documents reproduced below show that :
1- Permindex and Mantello’s businesses extended to South America where a Venezuelan corporation with impressive capitalization was mounted by Bloomfield according to Mantello’s directives;
2- One of Bloomfield’s associates in the prestigious law firm Phillips, Bloomfield, Vineberg & Goodman, was implicated in the Permindex dealing and had enough importance as to authorize who will take part in the deal ;
3- Edmund de Rothschild through his Parisian Compagnie Financière was a participant in one of the earliest Permindex real estate deal.

The following 1959 letters and cables, presented in chronological order, illustrated the unknown extent of the Permindex activities.

In a very short cable addressed to Georges Mantello and dated February 20, 1959, Louis Bloomfield give a first hint that Permindex business extend to Venezuela, something that we will see in more detail with other documents.

In April 1rst 1959, Louis Bloomfield sent three communications that reveal both Stanley Vineberg and Edmund Rothschild’s links to Permindex. In a first cable, he urged Georges Mantello to have his son Enrico provide legal and fiscal documentation to someone called “Pereire”, in order for him to be able to inspect a property. Other documents in the Bloomfield Archives give the full identity of this “Pereire” as being François Pereire from the Compagnie Financière, a private Paris bank in which Edmund de Rothschild is the principal shareholder. In the same message, Bloomfield informed Mantello that Vineberg is expecting him in Montreal with “satisfactory documentation”. This statement clearly indicates that attorney Stanley Vineberg, of the Phillips, Bloomfield, Vineberg & Goodman law firm was exercising an authority greater then Bloomfield’s.

A second cable, sent the same day, confirms the above information. First, it is sent to a Pereire at COMPAFINAN, the cable code name for the Compagnie Financière. And it is informing Pereire that “Vineberg agreeable your tenpercent participation”, a phrase that both confirm that Rothschild’s Compagnie Financière had a 10 % interest in this Permindex real estate deal, but also that Stanley Vineberg had enough power in Permindex to have his word on the Rothschild’s participation in this deal.

Another document, dated April 1rst 1959, give us an indication that Louis Bloomfield was in personal contact with Edmund Rothschild and was discussing directly with him about the Permindex real estate affairs. In this letter sent to Abraham Friedman of the Israel Continental Oil Company in Israel, Bloomfield is referring to a previous cable in which he informed Pereire of his project to go to Paris and asked if he could meet Edmund (Rothschild) and discuss Capacotta. The name of a sea front region near Rome, Capacotta was the location of one of the Permindex real estate speculative deal.

Alone, those four documents from the Bloomfield Archives held by Library and Archives Canada, give us unprecedented historical information about Permindex, the very discreet company that, rightly or not, was seen as being related to the JFK assassination. If four one-page documents can bring us so much new information, we have to wonder how much more is contained in the hundreds of other Permindex papers that LAC is still keeping secret against its donator's will? Perhaps, we should also wonder why Library and Archives Canada is behaving in such way?